Robert Musil Quotes

A book comes and says, 'Write me.

Like all former thinkers, I'm writing a book.

I've never actually even contemplated writing a book or having a book.

The few words of a title are the hardest words for any author to come up with.

I am writing a book and that takes third place of importance.

My dream was, and always had been, to write a book. To be a writer.

I wanted to be an author for as long as I can remember.

I won't write a book. I haven't got a magnum opus in me.

I wrote a novel, so now they can call me a novelist. I tell stories; that's it.

I have been writing since I was a kid and thought what I wrote down could one day be made into a book.

I'm constantly creating and writing.

To write a book is for all the world like humming a song—be but in tune with yourself, madam, 'tis no matter how high or how low you take it.

I had a series of terrible jobs, whatever would allow me to write for four hours during the day. During that time I wrote three novels - all of which were extraordinarily poor. I decided after that to go and get my MFA.

For me, reading books and writing them are tied together. The words of other writers teach me and refresh me and inspire me.

If you don't see the book you want on the shelves, write it.

Most writers want to share their essay or book much too quickly. Those who accept the pain of hard work and revising are those who get published.

To this day, if you ask me how I became a writer, I cannot give you an answer. To this day, if you ask me how a book is written, I cannot answer. For long periods, if I didn't know that somehow in the past I had written a book, I would have given up.

I write a book at least three times-once to understand it, the second time to improve the prose, and a third to compel it to say what it still must say.

You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it's hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it's better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can't write anybody's book but your own.

Go where the pleasure is in your writing. Go where the pain is. Write the book you would like to read. Write the book you have been trying to find but have not found. But write. And remember, there are no rules for our profession. Ignore rules. Ignore what I say here if it doesn't help you. Do it your own way. Every writer knows fear and discouragement. Just write.The world is crying for new writing. It is crying for fresh and original voices and new characters and new stories. If you won't write the classics of tomorrow, well, we will not have any.

You have to sink way down to a level of hopelessness and desperation to find the book that you can write.

To write is to pour one’s innermost self passionately upon the tempting paper, at such frantic speed that sometimes one’s hand struggles and rebels, overdriven by the impatient god which guides it - and to find, next day, in place of the golden bough that bloomed miraculously in that dazzling hour, a withered bramble and a stunted flower.

Friends open the door for me to write. Then I get paid attention to and it allows me to write other books. The Great Spring and the thirtieth anniversary of Bones just came out and while I'm happy and excited about that, I've already finished a new book. That's what practice does. You don't get caught.

I would say [I love] writing, because lately I've been finishing my book.

In political life, dissatisfaction is remedied, or at least combated, through action. For as long as you are not totally satisfied, you remain active and keep going. In literary life, at some point you have to stop and allow others to read what you have written. I find that difficult. I am probably too proud. In any case, that is why I have never published anything. But I do plan to do so one day.